Players

For those of you who are gamers, you realize that there are some groups you prefer gaming with and some you don't. The same is true for MMORPG's (or any large, persistent world) - we find a group with similar goals to hang out with (or adventure with or whatever). And the same is also true of gaming groups whose focus is board games.

My name is Joanna Winters; this is the first of a number of articles that will take my real-life experiences and tweak them for your tabletop sessions. Don't think, however, that I've led some illustrious career, some monumental history that sends me enduring the mounts of Everest. I don't work for Discovery or Natgeo: I merely find answers for what I and others find puzzling. Often times, these answers are far more mundane than their circumstances lie.

Many role-playing games include a system meant to model the characters' moral compasses or beliefs (or lack thereof). But is such a mechanic really necessary in a roleplaying game? If so, what's the best way to implement it? I'll share my opinions on what works and what doesn't in my own gaming experiences; you can (and should!) do the same in the comments.

A description of two characters from one of my past campaigns illustrates the topic of what it really means to depict and focus on both genders fairly and equally in your role-playing games. It also shows that if you're interested in making sure that your game gives equal time to men and women, doing so may be an easier task than you think.

The Shab-al-Hiri Roach is a Lovecraftian game of academic satire, designed for a single session of play. Players take on the role of professors at Pemberton University, a New England institute of higher education, in the year 1919. These professors, like those at any other university, jockey with one another for prestige and tenure. The catch? An ancient Sumerian roach-god with telepathic powers is running about, crawling inside heads and using you to wreak chaos and destruction upon the human race.

In my last column I covered eight personality archetypes, aligned along piratical lines. As one might expect, the followup to that discussion involves the age-old enemy of the pirates. Introducing the ninja.

In my previous column I explored the various letter codes that you can combine to help define a personality for your character. Along the way, I intimated that there are two major divisions (P and N) as well as a total of 16 subdivisions. This column explores the first half in more depth.

In my previous column I proposed a new system to describe characters via pairings of well-known archetypes. In this column, I explain how to interpret those pairings. If you have not read the first column you will probably not understand this one. Then again, maybe you won't understand it anyway. It's pretty complicated. Are you sure you're ready for this?